Tag: 2018

I’m partnering up with FitApproach & Gixofit to kick off the #IAMLIMITLESS movement for 2018. This is a sponsored post.

After a rough 2017, I was totally looking forward to a clean slate and starting 2018 on a very positive note. When FitApproach asked me to be a part of the #IAMLIMITLESS campaign, it was at the perfect time. I had been floundering at the end of 2017, stuck in a rut where, like I mentioned in my Resolution Run recap, I was sitting on the couch being sucked into iPhone games when I wasn’t working.

I had gone from being incredibly motivated to being lazy, not able to motivate myself to do anything but eat & sleep when I wasn’t working or traveling. But as Sean & I were hiking up the boulders on New Year’s Eve, I realized that I was giving into my fears. Somewhere along the way last year, I got sucked into all the drama I was seeing on Facebook and scared myself out of leaving my house. How did that happen?

As I was climbing up those boulders, some of which were significantly bigger than I was, I knew that I had to push past my fears if I wanted to reach my goals. One of my biggest fears, the one that most likely let all the Facebook drama win, failure. But fail at what? Running.

Now why would I say I’m afraid to fail at running. I’ve done 42 half marathons, 17 marathons, 7 50ks, 2 50 milers & a 100k. I’ve DNF’d at 4 races so obviously I’m not afraid of not finishing. But what if I actually worked really hard & I failed? I was putting all this pressure on myself before I even started.

It was time to put all that and all the baggage from 2017 behind me and push past these limits I put on myself. Let’s see what happens then. I’ve already seen that at the end of a long week of running I can almost beat my half marathon PR, with little training, so what could I do if I actually trained.

After seeing Billy Yang’s newest film, The Why, it was important to share my Why (re: Running) with you, my friends and followers. It was something I’ve been pondering for months, since I got injured. Why do I want to do this?

Now that I’ve seen that I can almost beat my half PR, I definitely want to crush that. I’d love to go under 4 hours in the marathon, get a Western States qualifier & do my first 100 miler. I want to find a group of people to run & to train with (when we are in town).

I have a bunch of races on the schedule for the first half of the year. I’m looking forward to doing a mix of shorter distances along with ultras as well. We are working on our summer/fall schedule now that the lotteries are pretty much finished, with hopefully a few new races on the schedule.

I’m also looking forward to visiting some new places while revisiting places we’ve been before. We have been traveling a lot & we have a tendency to revisit places quite often so we decided to kick off the year with a trip to a new to us destination, Borrego Springs on the edge of San Diego County & home to one of the largest state park in California, Anza Borrego Desert State Park. If the wives tale saying what you do on New Year’s is what you do all year is true, if we visit somewhere new hopefully we’ll visit a lot of new places ;).

And on that note, we’ve already booked our first trip to visit Yosemite in May. I’m so excited to finally get to visit!

I’ve been dealing with a lot of digestive distress, so I’m transitioning to a vegan diet and completely eliminated dairy & eggs. I’m looking forward to fixing my gut & getting back to feeling better in that area.

Some of this years goals are more broad than I’ve done in the past but as the year goes on, I’ll flesh them out as I push past my limits.

First off, I need to thank Sandy Feet Events and the San Diego Resolution Run for the entry to their race this past Sunday. Yes, they did give me an entry but like always, all thoughts and opinions, good or bad are my own.

As we already know, 2017 was a rough year. Honestly I think I ran 65 miles in December, 21ish of which were at Ray Miller. I was not motivated to get out the door and I honestly spent waaaay too much time playing games on my phone.

While I know you can start going after your goals at any time, I really needed that change of date to push me to get out the door. I needed to put 2017 and my year of injury behind me.

Sean & I went to Borrego Springs for New Years to go somewhere new and I changed my attitude. With 2 halfs & a 52 miler in January, the time for being lazy was over! Last week including the half marathon, I ran almost 35 miles! That’s over half of what I ran in December!

Anyways, now that all that’s out of the way, let’s get to the race. Like I said I got my entry for free, however the race was reasonably priced, ranging from $69 – $99 depending on when you registered. They also offered a 5k & 15k distance. This was the first year for the half marathon.

We got a number of emails from the race in the week before the race. They sent over our race numbers, info on parking, expo, etc. We decided to pick up our bibs at Road Runner on Saturday to save time. Interestingly, at this race they had decided to only give shirts to the half marathoners. The other interesting thing was that they had reusable timing chips that we had to put on our shoes, that were collected after the race.

On Sunday, we drove over to Mission Bay where the race was being held. The Half Marathon started at 7:15am so we wanted to have some time to settle in and not have to search too hard for parking.

We got there with plenty of time, they had a decent number of port-a-potties, we went early enough that there was barely a line. Smitha (@runningwithsd) was parked right behind us so we walked over to the start together & got a few photos. We were all #runmatchy, which was totally not planned at all.

The start line was really low key, barely anyone was there at 7:10, when eventually the announcer arrived and said a few words, announced that the wheel chairs were heading out. Then about 30 seconds later it was like and Go. It was a bit odd but it’s a really small race.

So off we went, down the parking lot to Fiesta Island where we would run all the way around the Island. It’s really nice running the island when there are no cars and very few bikes ;). The weather was really nice, humid, but the fog burnt off quickly.

I felt decent but I kept thinking, I’m running too fast, I need to slow down. I’ve barely run more than 10 miles in months & the last week of runs was really rough, but my legs felt good so I just kept moving.

Eventually around 5 miles in we finished the Fiesta Island loop and headed over towards the SeaWorld parking lot.

As I was entering this part of the course, I saw Sean on his way back. I’ve actually run parts of the course and this part was an out and back. The turn around was the only part of the course that I really disliked. They had us go down to the boat dock and do a really tight turn around on small sidewalk ramp. Fortunately there weren’t a ton of people because it would have seriously bottle necked if there had been.

Once we got back towards the finish line, we were running near the 5k finishers and then starting to see 15k runners. The second part of the course was an out and back on the sidewalk by the water.

I felt decent until about mile 8 when I took a short walk break. I took a second break when I saw Smitha ahead of me so we could get a quick photo & we saw Sean heading for us. I took a quick photo of him and then got moving again.

I felt pretty good, but I was getting tired. I had Skratch in my bottle but I didn’t have any carbopro so I wasn’t high on calories. I looked at my watch around mile 10 and realized that if I could finish the next 3.1 miles in less than 30 minutes I could sub2 so I pushed. At mile 11 I had to walk for a bit at the aid station, I was so tired, but I ate a few Skratch Labs chews and felt a little better.

All I had to do was make it to the finish line. I passed a few people, I don’t know if they were 15k or half runners, I saw my friend Robin from #run619 and just kept pushing. And then there was the turn to the finish line and my watch was slightly short, dang it! But I was under 2 hours! which was the fastest half marathon I’ve run since November 2014 – that’s huge!

After I finished, I got my medal, which is cool, it’s a little chalkboard where you can write your 2018 goal. I saw Sean & asked him how he did, he was way up there and I knew he probably placed in his age group. They had computers at the finish line so you could check your results. We checked Sean’s, he was 1st in his age group, 7th male and 9th overall. My results weren’t up immediately but when I did look again, I was 2nd in my age group! WOW, so exciting! Silly I know, but I’m not going to place in a big race so it was kind of exciting to know I placed in a race.

They gave us medals for our age group wins. We also got a little goodie bag with snacks, since going vegan I can’t eat most of the stuff they put in these bags so I just had a mini smoothie from Jamba Juice & grabbed a juice from Suja.

We were drenched so we headed out pretty quickly, but there was a nice post race environment with lots of vendors.

Overall, I would definitely recommend the Resolution Run & if we are in town again next year, I will be putting this race on my calendar :).

About Me

Hi, I'm Jenny. I'm a runner, traveler and foodie. I spend most of my time exploring the world one racecation at a time with my ultra-runner husband. Keep up with our adventures here.
You can email me at runnylegs@yahoo.com.